my mind on books

The Book A Month Challenge theme for January is time, an excellent choice that should be easy to connect with “books on the mind.” I think the hard part will be picking out one book to read! I’d especially like to find a good book on subjective time experience, or maybe something in the anthropology of time, comparing time experiences across cultures. Here are some possibilities:

• An Experiment With Time (Studies in Consciousness) by J.W. Dunne – a classic
• Mind Time: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness (Perspectives in Cognitive Neuroscience) by Benjamin Libet
• The Images of Time: An Essay on Temporal Representation by Robin Le Poidevin

Or, already in my library waiting to be read (sometime!):

• Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past by Eviatar Zerubavel
• The Story of Time (an exhibition catalog with essays by Umberto Eco and others)

Here’s a “LibraryThing tagmash” on time, mind

and one on time, anthropology

Browsing in some new books today, I came upon this:

Living has no meaning (except by way of projection or fabulation), nor is it absurd (despite the spiteful reaction of disbelief); it is beyond meaning.

François Jullien, Vital Nourishment: Departing from Happiness (tr. Arthur Goldhammer), p. 8

It is possible to verify the hypothesis that we are dreaming: we can verify it by waking up. The corollary of this assertion, or rather another way of putting the same fact, is the statement that it is possible to falsify the hypothesis that we are awake: we can falsify it by waking up. But the opposite is not true. It is not possible to falsify the hypothesis that we are dreaming or to verify the hypothesis that we are awake.

Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities by Wendy Doniger (O’Flaherty), p. 52

I want to make note of the paradoxical notion of “selfless solipsism” from John V. Canfield’s book ‘The Looking-Glass Self’ (more on the book in yesterday’s post) since I have spent some years looking into various forms of nondualism (especially Advaita Vedanta).

So Canfield quotes Wittgenstein: “Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure realism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality coordinated with it.” (The Looking Glass Self, p. 46)

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, has made his book ‘God’s Debris’ available as a free ebook. The link to download is available here: http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/godsdebris/

“Synopsis

Imagine that you meet a very old man who—you eventually realize—knows literally everything. Imagine that he explains for you the great mysteries of life—quantum physics, evolution, God, gravity, light, psychic phenomenon, and probability—in a way so simple, so novel, and so compelling that it all fits together and makes perfect sense. What does it feel like to suddenly understand everything? God’s Debris isn’t the final answer to the Big Questions. But it might be the most compelling vision of reality you will ever read. The thought experiment is this: Try to figure out what’s wrong with the old man’s explanation of reality. Share the book with your smart friends then discuss it later while enjoying a beverage.”